Parker Price Miller made it clear he wants the series and tracks to implement significant restrictions on support classes for national touring series shows.
Miller shared his opinion on an episode of DIRTVision’s Pit Bull after World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series Pit Reporter Connor Wade expressed his thoughts following the series races at Cedar Lake Speedway that saw significant down time due to accidents in the support divisions.
“We had a lot of non-wing cars, a full field or so for them the first night, they crash on top of each other and we sit there under red for 30 minutes while they try tow the cars off the track and try to get them from on top of each other. The next night we come back, we’ve got 31 limited 305s and we have 27 Outlaw cars and they have 4 heats and a B-Main and in the B-Main they tear the fence down.”
On top of delays for accidents, he also noted that in many cases the support divisions can drain the energy leading up to the main event instead of building it up, “You go out there and sit and watch them tow support class cars off the track for 30 minutes, or watch four support class heat races that are single file around the bottom, it drains the energy out of the event. It really takes a lot of energy out of the event. At the end of the day it’s not good. It’s ridiculous. And we shouldn’t have to dedicate that much portion of a show to a support class.”
After sharing that he understands there can be benefits to support divisions such as exposing the track’s weekly program to a national audience, he suggested that the Outlaws potentially eliminate support divisions altogether.
“I’ll just say it, High Limit, they have a lot of shows with no support classes and a lot of people really like that. That seems to work well for them. So there’s a way to do it.”
He even used baseball as analogy noting that MLB teams do not bring out AAA teams to perform during the seventh inning stretch.
“I’m really interested to see if in between innings the AAA teams come out and start playing a game to kill time in between the innings. Maybe during the seventh inning stretch we can get a four-inning AAA game. … My bet is that’s probably not going to happen and it shouldn’t happen in dirt racing either.”
Parker Price Miller followed that up with his own prescription for how national touring series should put restrictions on support classes.
“When you have a support class it should be no more than three heat races, no consolation race for them, and like a time limit. Because those fans, I believe in everyone getting a chance, but also they’re there for a reason and it’s not for them. That’s as putting it as nice as I can really. And they should know that. It’s part of it.”
“An NFL game lasts about 3-4 hours an MLB game is about the same so from hot laps to checkered flag should be no more than 4 hours in my opinion,” he added. “And I think you should be able to get in there and get out and let everyone have enough time to go in the pits after the races, meet their favorite drivers, where we’re not throwing the checkered flag at 11 o’clock and hey, we got a 2-hour drive, we’re not going to get home ’til 1 am and we have some kids that are miserable with us too.”
“It’s unfortunate that it still happens, but I would love to see going forward there be more strict time limits or car counts for support classes,” he concluded.
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